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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28197534">The Phoenix and The Mountains</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/writinggoblin/pseuds/writinggoblin'>writinggoblin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Mostly post-canon except right at the beginning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:01:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,102</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28197534</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/writinggoblin/pseuds/writinggoblin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Come on, Toph,” said Sokka, “What about yours? Do you have one?”<br/>“Oh, I have one,” said Toph sarcastically, “I’m sure it’s great. According to my mother, it’s a pretty yellow bird.” She rolled her eyes and everyone laughed.</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>When she was young, Toph decided that she had better things to do than worry about her soulmark. Plus, something she can't see is of limited use. Until suddenly she cares a lot about who her soulmate is...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Toph Beifong/Zuko</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>464</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Phoenix and The Mountains</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I love soulmate AU's, and I have a soft spot for this underrated pairing. Suddenly this happened. Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Toph had never cared all that much about soulmarks. Sure, she understood them in theory. They were the physical representation of another person’s soul on your body. The person, or people, you were destined to be closest to in your life. Every single one was unique in shape, placement, and color, as diverse as the people they represented. Which was great and all, but it was one of the things in life that at a young age Toph was forced to concede sounded like a seeing-people-thing. She had run her fingers over the skin where her soulmark was supposed to be and felt nothing. No difference in texture, no slightly raised lines, nothing. This left having someone else describe it to her, and, well,</p>
<p><br/>
“Don’t worry, sweetie, your soulmark is very pretty.” Her mother had cooed in a patronizingly sympathetic voice when her daughter had finally asked.</p>
<p><br/>
“Yea, but what does it <em>look like</em>?” Toph finally demanded out of frustration when she was seven.</p>
<p><br/>
“Oh, well,” her mother fumbled, looking for the words, “It’s sort of a yellow bird on the right side of your stomach.”</p>
<p><br/>
This unsatisfactory conversation led to two conclusions on Toph’s part. First, that admitting weakness in the form of admitting she couldn’t see something to her parents, or anyone for that matter, was a mistake that would only get her coddled. She vowed to stop doing it. Second, she decided that soul marks were stupid. If this person was so theoretically perfect for her, then they’d find her destiny or not. So, she decided to ignore her soulmark, which was surprisingly easy. It wasn’t like she had anyway to detect it was even there, anyway.</p>
<p><br/>
After that, she spent less time worrying about what she couldn’t do and see and more time practicing her earthbending with the badgermoles. She improved rapidly, not that anyone knew or cared. Her stupid ‘teacher’ still had her doing breathing exercises during her official lessons. When she was nine, she overheard some guards talking about an underground Earthbending fighting ring where people were competing for a spot in something called Earth Rumble III. The way they whispered, it seemed to be against the rules and possibly the law. Toph thought it sounded awesome.</p>
<p><br/>
She followed them there that night and started competing under the name the Blind Bandit. No one recognized her, thanks to her parent’s top notch efforts at keeping her a secret. At first, she lost, over and over again. She was still getting a feel for fighting an actual person rather than just practicing against a wall or a dummy she’d created. Eventually, she started winning. Then, by the time Earth Rumble IV happened, she went undefeated in the tournament. She was pushing two years as undefeated when Aang wiped the floor with her. She felt slightly better about her loss when later that evening she had the chance to fight every single fighter in Earth Rumble VI simultaneously. And won.</p>
<p><br/>
~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
Travelling with the Avatar was great. She had friends for the first time in her life. She could almost see what people meant when they said needing other people wasn’t necessarily weakness. It could be a strength, too. It wasn’t that she needed them for survival, strictly speaking, but she was better with them than without. She could get by on her own, sure, but she preferred to keep those losers around. They forgot she was blind sometimes, which made for some hilarious jokes on her part. Sokka was particularly vulnerable to them. She once managed to convince him to follow her directions while on flying Appa for a solid twenty minutes before he realized what she was doing. It was great.</p>
<p><br/>
Toph stood her ground on letting Sparky joined the group, even after he burned her feet. Sure, it hurt like hell, but she’d could sense his guilt about the whole thing, and he was clearly genuine about wanting to help. To hear Katara tell it, he was some kind of evil mastermind part of a cabal of evil masterminds with his sister and dad. And possibly some guy name Zhao. Toph just wasn’t buying it. Sure, he struck her as awkward and maybe a little jumpy, but not evil. His family was shitty, and she knew a thing or two about getting messed up by your shitty family.</p>
<p><br/>
Not to mention he was even more vunerable to her blind jokes than Sokka. The poor thing was so trusting it felt almost cruel to pull them. Almost. She decided she was allowed to be a little mean since he had burned her feet. He seemed to agree, and never complained about her wild goose chases.</p>
<p><br/>
Slowly, everyone else warmed up to Zuko, too. Twinkle toes was first, obviously, Toph thought it caused him physical pain to dislike anyone. Then Sokka came around. Apparently, you can’t break out of a maximum-security Fire Nation prison together without becoming friends. Finally, Katara broke down and admitted that she forgave him after he helped her almost-murder someone. Personally, that’s not what would have convinced Toph, but oh well, to each their own.</p>
<p><br/>
One night on Ember Island, the conversation turned to soulmarks. To literally no one’s surprise, Twinkle Toes and Sugar Queen were soulmates. They described the marks for Toph’s benefit. To her absolute shock, she found this didn’t upset her. Aang’s was the stone from Katara’s necklace, positioned directly over his heart. Katara’s was a blue arrow wrapped around her neck like a betrothal necklace. It was normally covered by her real necklace, which is why no one else had seen it.</p>
<p><br/>
“but wait,” said Toph, “didn’t Sparky steal your necklace for a while way back at the beginning of all this? Why didn’t everyone see it then.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Well, Sokka and Aang had already seen it,” reasoned Katara, “and Zuko…”</p>
<p><br/>
“I was a bit preoccupied with capturing the Avatar” Admitted Sparky, “I probably did see her mark, but I didn’t notice. It’s blue, the necklace it blue…” his voice trailed off as Toph laughed hysterically.</p>
<p><br/>
“Come on, Toph,” said Sokka, “What about yours? Do you have one?”</p>
<p><br/>
“Oh, I have one,” said Toph sarcastically, “I’m sure it’s great. According to my mother, it’s a pretty yellow bird.” She rolled her eyes and everyone laughed. They moved on. Sokka and Suki were not soulmates, but Sokka didn’t have one and Suki’s was platonic, another Kyoshi Warrior. Zuko wasn’t sure who his was for. Apparently, it looked like someone had taken a calligraphy brush and painted mountains across his right side. He had no clue what it might mean.</p>
<p><br/>
“Don’t worry, when your soulmate sees the mark, they’ll know.” Says Suki confidently, “That’s what happened with mine, this jolt like electricity goes through you and you know.” Toph tried not to feel jealous. Even when she found her soulmate, she’d never get that moment. She didn’t often feel her lack of eyesight anymore. When she’d been younger, the fact that she couldn’t imagine colors had bothered her. Now, she figured she was willing to trade colors for inventing metalbending, training the Avatar, and saving the world (they hadn’t quite done that last one yet, but she figured it was just a matter of time.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
Sozin’s comet was a shit show. They did manage to save the world and stop Sparky’s crazy family, but Toph almost died. She’d never felt her blindness so acutely, dangling from the edge of the blimp, with nothing in the world but Sokka clinging to her hand. Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night, terrified that she was falling. Oddly enough, it was Zuko she went to about it. He seemed like the person least likely to be judgy about it, since she knew from the screaming at the beach house and the pacing in the Air Temple that he had nightmares of his own. She was right.</p>
<p><br/>
“I don’t know how to stop them, unfortunately. If I did, I wouldn’t have any nightmares,” Zuko said, “but honestly, I see them differently than I used to now. I feel like it’s okay to be scared of what happened. It was horrible and unfair and we’re all too young for this crap, but it happened anyway. It’s okay to be upset about it.” It had helped in its own weird Zuko-y way.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
Toph decided not to become police chief. Toph felt like it would just be weird to be on that side of the law. The closest she was prepared to get was vigilante justice. Unfortunately, the government of Yu Dao seemed to feel differently about all of this and kept badgering her. Eventually, she gave up and left the police position to her least incompetent students and took her metalbending academy to the Fire Nation. She selected the Fire Nation because she figured Sparky could use the company.</p>
<p><br/>
Weirdly, Zuko was less broody and mopey that he had been before taking on one of the hardest jobs in the world. Zuko, Toph had come to realize, was happiest when he had a task to obsessively focus all of his energy on. You know, like capturing the Avatar, or defeating his evil father, or apparently pulling the Fire Nation out of a century of self-inflicted pain. This meant, however, that someone needed to remind him to do such trivial activities as eating and sleeping and taking days off once or twice a year. This job, for some inexplicable reason, fell to the least responsible and least nurturing member of the group; Toph.</p>
<p><br/>
On the other hand, Zuko responded well to someone coming in and just flat out telling him what to do, rather than trying to gently coax. He wasn’t real good at subtlety. So at first, she would drop by a few times a week and check on him to make sure he hadn’t accidentally starved himself. Once, she came back to discover that he literally hadn’t moved to eat, sleep or bathe in between her visits. Not even once. She had been forced to employ drastic measures including earthbending and the Kyoshi Warriors to get him to go to sleep. It was for his own good.</p>
<p><br/>
One day, the Firelord insisted that he could not eat until he had figured out a solution to some problem or other- Toph vaguely recalled that it had been something about grain, or maybe taxes?- and Toph had finally taken matter into her own hands.</p>
<p><br/>
“read it to me.” Toph had said bluntly.</p>
<p><br/>
“What?” Sparky sounded startled, “Why?”</p>
<p><br/>
“So that I can tell you how to fix it.”</p>
<p><br/>
“You think you can solve a problem that has been plaguing the best advisors in the Fire Nation for months in time for dinner?” He sounded incredulous, Toph only smiled. There was a long pause, and then Zuko had sighed and read her a really boring memo. She hadn’t solved it on her own, of course, but the two of them working together had sorted out much faster than she would have thought.</p>
<p><br/>
The next time she came by, he asked to bounce some more ideas off her. Slowly, she found herself attending meetings and tipping him off to which of his advisors were lying to him the most. All of them lied to him sometimes, a fact which seemed to distress him to no end. Sparky could be overly trusting. This seemed kind of weird for someone whose childhood had sucked so bad. Then again, Toph’s rampant paranoia made no sense either given her incredibly sheltered childhood, though she privately chalked it up to her own ability to tell when people were lying. Hard to trust someone when you knew they didn’t always tell you the truth. Sometimes about really stupid stuff. She got why you would lie about embezzling from the royal treasury, but about your favorite play? That was one of the reason’s she liked Sparky so much, the guy was almost pathologically honest.</p>
<p><br/>
So, they found themselves working together at this whole running a country thing. She helped him out, even as she ran her metalbending school. Despite her earlier protests against being police chief, she was more than comfortable with completely overhauling the judicial system. There were some protests, initially, to an Earth Kingdom citizen being so important in the Fire Nation. Over time however, her take-no-prisoners, take-no-bullshit attitude won them over. She had one elderly General inform her that she might be ‘by birth of the Earth Kingdom but she had the spirit of the Fire Nation inside her’. Toph decided to take that as a compliment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
Suddenly, the world found itself ten years after the end of the war. Zuko was ten years into his reign, and Toph was three years into her work in the Fire Nation. It was late at night, and they were sitting together in the Fire Lord’s office going over as some unbelievably tedious bill or other.</p>
<p><br/>
“We probably can’t execute the education minister for being boring, right?” Toph groaned, slumping against Zuko’s shoulder.</p>
<p><br/>
“If I die of boredom, I’m pretty sure you can get him for assassinating the Fire Lord. Everyone on the council knows him, it wouldn’t be a stretch.” Zuko replied, absently. Toph laughed in response,</p>
<p><br/>
“Your jokes are getting better, Sparky.” Toph punched his arm, “It only took you a decade.”</p>
<p><br/>
“I’ve always been a slow learner, but I do learn.” He yawned. “It’s late, we should take this up in the morning.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Or we could refuse to respond until the Minister of Education learns to write reports that don’t put me to sleep.” Toph replied, standing and stretching, “Even the Minister of the Treasury manages it and he’s got the most boring subject matter on the planet to work with.”</p>
<p><br/>
“I’d take a dozen memos from the minister of education in exchange for getting rid of the constant string of letters I get throwing various nobles’ daughters at me.” Zuko sighed.</p>
<p><br/>
“Still after you to get married, huh Sparky?” Toph teased.</p>
<p><br/>
“Always.” He grumbled, “I mean, it’s not like they’re wrong. I need to marry and produce an heir. I just… I really want to pick someone I love.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Still no luck on the soulmate front, then?” Toph asked.</p>
<p><br/>
“None,” He admitted, “At some point, I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and marry anyway. Soulmate or no. Any luck on your end?”</p>
<p><br/>
“Well, it’s pretty hard to know, since I can’t exactly see people’s soulmarks. I’ll have to wait for my soulmate to let me know.” Toph pointed out, but she touched her side involuntarily, as if she could feel the mark.</p>
<p><br/>
“Well, I guess you’ll know you’ve met the right person when you trust them at their word.” Zuko replied, standing up,</p>
<p><br/>
“Yea, or I could use my awesome lie detector powers to know if their honest.” Toph grinned.</p>
<p><br/>
“You could, but that’s less romantic.” Zuko frowned, Toph just shrugged. “Good Night, Toph.”</p>
<p><br/>
“‘Night, Sparky.”</p>
<p><br/>
Back in her bed that night, Toph spent a long time convincing herself that she wasn’t upset because Zuko had talked about marrying someone who wasn’t her, she was upset because he was going to marry someone he didn’t love. Someone who wasn’t his soulmate. She decided she wasn’t upset about the fact that his soulmate wasn’t her, either.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
The tenth anniversary of the end of the war was an absolute blowout party in the Fire Nation. For starters, it was both the anniversary of the end of the war, and the coronation of the new Fire Lord. Not to mention the end of the era of repression and war that had started under Sozin. Unsurprisingly, people in the Fire Nation were pretty pleased to get their basic human rights returned and stop dying in constant, pointless war. At least most of them were, there was no accounting for the radical fringe who were all revved up to return to the bad old days of fascism and suppression.</p>
<p><br/>
Toph was determined, however, not to let that radical fringe cause trouble for the rest of the country. Especially not the Fire Lord, who deserved to be happy for just this one day. Which is why on the morning of the celebration she found herself semi-threatening the chief of police for Caldera and the leader of Kyoshi Warriors, aka the Fire Lord’s guards. Sure, the leader of the Kyoshi Warrior’s was Suki, who was not just an old friend but Sokka’s wife now, which basically made her Toph’s sister, but that wasn’t going to stop Toph from making the situation very, very clear to her.</p>
<p><br/>
“I am holding both of you personally responsible for security today.” Toph said seriously, “If anything goes wrong you will have to answer to me.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Master Beifong, the Fire Lord gave us this same speech yesterday.” Said Chief Li, “and I will tell you what I told him, that I assure you we have taken every precaution for this event, and that we have heard no whisper that anyone is plotting anything in any case.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Chief Li, I am well aware of what the Fire Lord did, but I am not the Fire Lord. Maybe the Fire Lord is happy with that answer, but we both know that this event is too big for someone not to be plotting something. If you haven’t found it yet that just means they’ve actually managed to keep it secret. In my book that means you should be more worried not, not less.” Judging from the pale shade of green the chief was turning, he agreed with her assessment.</p>
<p><br/>
“We’ll be on alert, ma’am.” He saluted. “I swear, I will be giving my full attention to this today.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Good, you are dismissed.” Li saluted before departing, leaving her alone with Suki. Who managed to keep it together until the older man was outside, at which point she burst into uncontrollable giggles.</p>
<p><br/>
“I’m sorry, Toph” she gasped, “Your completely right. It’s just… that man is more afraid of you than he is of the actual Fire Lord.”</p>
<p><br/>
“He should be, Zuko coasts on the scar and the fact that his dad was a fucking psycho.” Toph had no idea what the scar looked like, she’d felt it once, years ago, but it had mostly just seemed bumpy and rough, more like dirt than skin. From her, that was a compliment. She had since been assured it was intimidating. For some reason. “He’s not really scary. Sure, he puts on a front, but inside he’s a soft little turtle-duck.” She scoffed. Suki’s heartbeat was doing something weird. “Spit it out, face paint. What aren’t you saying?”</p>
<p><br/>
“Nothing, it’s just…” Toph heard a smirk in her voice, “it’s really cute how you and Zuko talk about each other. How long have you two know you were soulmates?”</p>
<p><br/>
“What?” of all the things Toph had been expecting, this was not one of them. “Suki, I- We’re not soulmates!” At least, not that Toph knew of… “Did Zuko say something?” Had he ever seen her soulmark?</p>
<p><br/>
“Nothing!” Suki exclaimed, “Sorry, I just assumed… you guys have been so close recently, and- Are you not soulmates?”</p>
<p><br/>
“I… don’t know.” Toph hated to admit it. “We’ve never seen each other’s soulmarks.” <em>I’ll never see his soulmark. Or mine</em>. Toph shook these thoughts from her mind.</p>
<p><br/>
“Sorry, Toph.” Suki sounded embarrassed, “I guess I misread the situation. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”</p>
<p><br/>
“It’s fine, but we’re not soulmates, either platonic or romantic.” Toph said, with more certainty than she felt. “Now, do I need to threaten you to get you to do your job, too? Or can I trust the Kyoshi Warriors have everything under control.”</p>
<p><br/>
“You and I both know you never trust anyone to do as good a job as you.” Suki teased, “but I promise we are coming in at a close second to the world’s greatest metalbender.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
The rest of her friends arrived in the capital that morning. Katara and Aang had swung by the new-minted Republic City to pick up the new-minted Councilman Sokka. Sokka was ecstatic to see his wife again. Toph and Zuko had been taking bets for months about how long it would be before Suki would resign her position and take a position on the police in Republic City.</p>
<p><br/>
“They’ll never make it another six weeks. Your gonna lose and lose bad, Sparky.” Toph whispered to him as they watched the joyous reunion.</p>
<p><br/>
“Suki’ll never admit she was swayed by this visit. She wants to appear professional and unswayed by matters of the heart. That gives me at least a month of her holding off to make it seem unrelated.” Zuko replied smugly</p>
<p><br/>
“You’re still two weeks short dingus.” Toph reminded him</p>
<p><br/>
“She has to give a two week notice to stay and acclimate her replacement.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Well at least you know Ty lee won’t go anywhere, so the switch only happens once. She’ll never leave Mai, they’re so in love it’s disgusting.” Toph sighed.</p>
<p><br/>
“So why are you sticking around?” He half-teased.</p>
<p><br/>
“For you, obviously.” Toph hadn’t meant it to come off sounding quite so sincere, but she decided not to back pedal, or risk making it worse.</p>
<p><br/>
“Oh.” He said softly, not sounding as upset as she’d feared. She felt his heart pick up slightly, and remembered what Suki said. Did Zuko like her? She tried to tell herself she didn’t care. But she could feel his heartbeat through her feet, and his heat from where he was standing next to her, and she couldn’t convince herself like she could when he wasn’t present.</p>
<p><br/>
The realization should not have been as shocking as it was. They’d been friends for years, and since the end of the war he’d become her best friend. She didn’t want him to marry someone else. She didn’t want his soulmate to be anyone else. She wanted him to be hers and only hers. Well, fuck.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
Toph considered it to be yet another sign of her overwhelming awesomeness that she managed to get through the day’s festivities without anyone noticing the massive freak out she was having inside. What exactly does one do when you realize you’re in love with your best-friend / coworker / occasional-partner-in-crime? (no judging- running a country was stressful and sometimes you just needed to beat up criminals to blow off some steam. Zuko said it didn’t really count as vigilante justice since they were the two highest ranking judicial authorities in the country. Toph tried not to worry about what that implied about said country.)</p>
<p><br/>
Her first thought was to wait. Let Zuko make the first move, if he really like her. Then she realized that any plan that involved Zuko taking the lead in a social encounter was doomed. He sometimes got nervous asking for her advice on domestic security, and that was her actual job. He would never be able to profess his love unprompted. It might actually be challenging for him even if she professed her undying love first. She felt mildly disgusted with herself for the way her heart melted at the thought of his stupidly adorable awkwardness. Still, there was no way around it, you want a job done right, you have to do yourself.</p>
<p><br/>
To prove her point, a bunch of people tried to kill the Firelord during the festival. To be clear, it wasn’t a bunch like a-coordinated-attack-by-one-group, or even a-bunch-of-random-crazies-independently-attack. No this was several-different-coordinated-efforts-to-kill-the-Firelord-happen-at-the-same-time. Naturally, they got past Li’s idiots, leaving Toph and the Kyoshi Warriors to deal with the mess. Fortunately, all the different groups got in each other’s way, all of them wanted the glory of killing the Firelord themselves. People were morons. It made her job easier.</p>
<p><br/>
“Is it wrong that I find fighting off assassination attacks oddly relaxing?” Zuko asked as they dragged the last of the assassins off to some dark cell where they would never see the light of day again.</p>
<p><br/>
“Nah, it’s way easier to take down assassins than it is to negotiate grain tariffs with the Earth Kingdom.” Toph replied, dusting off her hands.</p>
<p><br/>
“Why did I agree to let you help me with that again? Isn’t it a conflict of interest?” His confusion was fake, they’d had this conversation once a week throughout the negotiations. Toph enjoyed replying with a different response every time.</p>
<p><br/>
“Because I’m your most ruthless negotiator. By far.” He laughed but didn’t argue. Toph’s heart did that awful melty thing again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~:~:~</p>
<p><br/>
That night Toph found herself standing outside of Zuko’s bedroom door for no discernable reason. This was a bad idea, she wasn’t ready. She needed more time to think about what to say. Or come up with an escape plan. Or- She knocked. Then regretted it, then didn’t, then did again. All of this passed in the space of the three seconds it took for Zuko to open the door.</p>
<p><br/>
“Toph?” he asked, sounding half asleep.</p>
<p><br/>
“Can I come in?” she didn’t like the way the two Kyoshi warriors were standing. They seemed like they were amused.</p>
<p><br/>
“Of course,” Zuko stepped aside and Toph entered. She considered sitting down, but decided that the bed felt weirdly suggestive, and that the chairs would create an awkward amount of space. So, she settled for standing in the middle of the room. Okay, now all she had to do was say the damn words. And the dive out a window and burrow into the tunnels under the city where she could live for the rest of her days. Good plan, Toph.</p>
<p><br/>
“My mom is the only one who’s ever seen my soulmark.” Toph said instead. She officially had no idea where she was going with this. “She didn’t want to talk to me about it at all, but I made her. I think she hated the idea that even as a sheltered little girl, I had this undeniable connection to the rest of the world. Someone I was meant to find.”</p>
<p><br/>
“My dad hated mine too.” Zuko said, it wasn’t news to Toph, he’d told her this before. But she listened anyway. “He though connections to others made you weak. He never had a mark, neither did my sister.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Well, in order to have a soulmark you have a soul first.” Toph quipped, then paused. She wasn’t sure why she was telling him this now, after all this time. It felt right somehow, “You know what my mother said to me first, about my soulmark? ‘Don’t worry, it’s pretty.’ In her world, there was nothing more important than being pretty. In mine, nothing matters less. I don’t know if I’m pretty, I’ll never know. And that’s fine, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy with who I am, everything I’ve become. I wouldn’t have learned what I did about earthbending if I weren’t blind, but it doesn’t mean I don’t regret sometimes that I can’t see. I wish I could see my soulmark, I wish I could see my soulmate’s soulmark. They could be standing in front of me, holding their mark under my nose, and I’d never know.” She swallowed, and was grateful when Zuko let her collect herself for a moment in silence. “I love you.” She whispered at last, “I love you and I want you to be my soulmate.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For one horrible moment those words hung in the air. Then Zuko closed the distance between them in two quick steps and wrapped his arms around her. The kiss was, all things considered, chaste, but it felt perfect. Especially when Zuko pulled away, but only an inch, and whispered back,</p>
<p><br/>
“I love you too.” Several considerably longer and less chaste kisses followed, and they ended up wrapped around each other on Zuko’s embarrassingly large bed. Zuko pressed gentle kisses into her neck and she pushed his shirt aside and ran her hands over his back…</p>
<p><br/>
She gasped in shock, jerking her hands away as if burnt.</p>
<p><br/>
“What? What happened? What’s wrong?” He sounded confused and worried. Toph was smiling. She reached out and ran her hand along his mark, tracing the lines with pinpoint accuracy. It felt almost warm, oddly tingly against her skin. She could feel it. She could feel it and she knew.</p>
<p><br/>
“I can feel your soulmark.” She whispered, giddily, “It’s me. I’m-I’m your soulmate.” Words seemed to fail him, he kissed her again, harder.</p>
<p><br/>
“Can I see yours?” He asked, shyly.</p>
<p><br/>
“Hell yes!” she grinned, “and I want a better description this time than ‘yellow bird’.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Deal.” Without hesitating, she pulled off her shirt, exposing the mark. She heard his gasp and knew he was experiencing the same feeling of certainty she has a moment earlier. She gave him a few seconds to admire the mark before pouncing,</p>
<p><br/>
“Well? Don’t hold out on me! What does it look like?” she demanded</p>
<p><br/>
“it’s- it’s not a yellow bird.” He sounded like he was trying to collect his thoughts.</p>
<p><br/>
“So my mom lied? I’m not saying she wouldn’t, it’s just-”</p>
<p><br/>
“No, I don’t think she lied. It’s just really more of a gold than yellow-”</p>
<p><br/>
“Spirits, your even worse at this than my mother. Let’s imagine for a brief moment that colors mean literally nothing to me. What the fuck has been permanently affixed to my body because of you, Zuko?” She moaned</p>
<p><br/>
“It’s a phoenix.” Zuko explained quickly, “Your mom was right about one thing- it is beautiful.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Since it’s the physical representation of your soul, isn’t that bragging?” Toph teased, but she was dragging him back in for another kiss. She felt it as he flushed and fumbled, but she cut him off with her lips. There wasn’t much talking for quite a long time after that.</p>
<p><br/>
“They aren’t just any mountains.” Toph told him later, while they lay in his bed. “They’re the mountains around Gaoling, where I grew up. The caves underneath them were where I first learned how to Earthbend from the badgermoles. That’s why it’s my soul mark.”</p>
<p><br/>
“I’m not quite sure why a phoenix is mine,” he admitted, “Part of me wonders- in order for a phoenix to be reborn they have to completely self-destruct. Implode and burn themselves out to be reborn stronger. That certainly feels appropriate.”</p>
<p><br/>
“Only you could take a creature famed for its beauty, powerful fire magic, and immortality, and make it self-deprecating.” Toph informed him, “We need to work on your self-esteem, Sparky.”</p>
<p><br/>
In the end, Toph didn’t go back to her room until the morning. She could feel the two Kyoshi guards giving her knowing looks as she passed. Toph made a mental note to avoid Suki for a few days, she was going to be unbearable about this.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! I loved writing from Toph's perspective. This fic was mostly just me enjoying Toph being awesome and Zuko being awkward. Also, I really feel like they would both be super clueless about their own feelings, even though Toph is super in tune to other people's feelings.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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